Pakxe

Pakxe or Pakse (population 70,000) is a city in southern Laos, situated at the confluence of the Xedone and Mekong Rivers. It is the largest city in Champasak province and its capital and is the gateway to the Bolaven Plateau. It was also the former capital of the Lao Kingdom of Champasak.

This city was founded by the French as an administrative outpost in 1905, and was formerly the capital of the Lao Kingdom of Champasak and residence of the King of Champasak at Champasak Palace, which was abolished in 1946 when the Kingdom of Laos was formed. Since the construction of a bridge over the Mekong (built with Japanese aid), allowing road traffic with Ubon Ratchathani in Thailand, Pakse has become the commercial centre of southern Laos. The Pakse airport finished construction on November 2, 2009, resuming flights to Vientiane and Bangkok.

Capitalizing on its location at the confluence of the Xe Don and the Mekong river, roughly halfway between the bustling Thai border and the fertile Bolaven Plateau, Pakxe has steadily risen in prominence since its relatively recent beginning a hundred years ago as a French administrative centre, and is now the region’s most important market town, attracting buyers and seller from Salavan Attapu, Xekong and Si Phan Don as well as from Thailland.

Ban Saphai and Don Kho

Pick  up trucks leave regularly from the stand near Pakxe’s ferry landing to make the 15km trip north to the cluster of villages known locally of their silk weaving. Of these, Ban Saphai, a sizeable village on the left bank of the Mekong river a few km west of route 13, has become increasingly populate with tourist keen on seeing women weaving on tradition hand looms, set up in the shed under the family house. Their textiles are sold in one or two shops in the village’s market or if you prefer you can negotiate with one of the weavers directly, although there’s nothing here that you won’t find in Pakxe.

Kiatngong, Phou Asa and Ban Phapho

Located approximately, 50km southeast of Pakxe, Kiatngong is one of several villages in the area whose inhabitants keep elephants. Recently, it has started hiring out elephants to tourist for tracks up nearby Phou Asa. A jungle-clad hill with some mysterious ruins stop its summit, Phou Asa is thought to date back to the 19 century. The site’s layout suggests it was possibly used as a fort, though archeologists admit that the crudely stacked stone walls and pillars are an enigma. Local villagers believing the ruins to be the remains of an ancient Buddha’s forefront, carved into a low cliff below the ruins. From the summit commanding views of the surrounding dense jungle, rice fields and villages lend credence to the fort hypothesis.

Champasak, Wat Phou and Khmer temple

From Pakxe, daily passenger boats ply the 40km stretch of the Mekong south, past misty green mountains and riverbanks loaded with palm trees, to the former kingdom of Champasak. Of little interest in itself, this drowsy rural town is best known as the gateway to Wat Phou and the Khmer ruins. Accommodation is available at Champaks, allowing you to take in the sights at a leisurely pace, but it is rather limited. It might be worth considering using Pakxe, with its better facilities, as a base and taking in Wat Phou as a day-trip from there, through you’ll need to hire a car to make this feasible as public transport tends to dominated in the mornings only.
It’s not hard to see why this lush river valley, dominated by an imposing 1500m tall mountain has been considered prime real estate for nearly two thousand years by a variety of peoples in particular the Khmer.

Si Phan Don

In Laos’s deepest south, just above border with Cambodia, the muddy stream of the Mekong is shattered into a 14km wide web of rivulets creating a land-locked archipelago. Known as Si Phan Don or 4,000 islands, this labyrinth of islets, rocks and sandbars has acted as a kind of bell jar, preserving traditional southern by the French or American wars, and the islanders’ customs and folk ways have been passed down uninterrupted since ancient times. As might be expected of island families fishing for a living and catching an average of 355kg of fish per family per year. Ecological awareness among locals is high, with nearly half of the villages in the district participating in voluntary fisheries conservation programmers.

Don Khong

The largest of the 4,000 islands group Don Khong draws a steady stream of visitors most of whom use it as a bees to explore other attractions in Si Phan Don. Don Khong is surprisingly wide for a river island, though and has a few interesting sights of its own. The island is known locally for its venerable collection of Buddhist temples, some with visible signs of a history stretching back to the 6 or 7 century. These together with the island’s good-value accommodation and interesting cuisine, based on fresh fish from Mekong, made Don Khong the prefer place for including both adventurous and lazy moods.

Southern loop

The chain of picturesque villages which line the south coast make the southern loop, roughly 20km long, the more popular of the two itineraries. Flowing the river road south from Muang Khong, you soon cross a rotting wooden beige, with an inscription indicating that it was constructed in 1963 by USAID, which was sometimes used as a front for shadow CIA activities during the Second Indochina war. Take care to stick to the narrow path along the river and not the road that parallels it slightly inland, A couple of km south of Muang Khong lies the village of Ban Na, where the real scenery begins.

Northern loop

While not recommended for softies, the rutted and shameless roads of the northern loop reward handsomely with access to what is certainly one of southern Lao’s most idyllic spots. The total distance of approximately 35km is probably best covered by motorbike in the hot season, when industrial-strength sun block and a wide-brimmed hat are a must. From Muang Khong, this journey is embarked upon by heading due west on the road that bisects the island. During the hot season the plain of rice paddies that makes up much of the interior of the island looks and feels like a stretch of the Kalahari. After the rains break and rice paddies are planted the scenery is actually quite beautiful.

Don Khon and Don Det

Tropical islands in the classic sense, Dong Khon and Don Det are fringed with swaying coconut palms and inhabited by easygoing, sarong-clad villages. Located south of Dong Khong, the islands are especially stunning during the  rainy season when rice paddies in the interior have been ploughed and planted in soothing hues of jade and emerald. Besides being a picturesque lilies haven to while away a few days, the islands provide opportunities for some leisurely trekking.
A delightfully sleepy place with a timeless feel about it, Ban Khon located on Dong Khon at the eastern end of the bridges, is the island’s largest settlement and has the most comfortable accommodation, plus a near-monopoly on eateries. A handful of quaintly decrepit French-era building with terracotta tile roofs adds some colonial color to the village’s collection of rustic homes of wood, bamboo and thatch. A short walk south of the bridge stands the village monastery, Wat Khon Tai. Just behind the newly built sim is the late rite foundation of what was once a Khmer temple dedicated to the god Shiva.

Khon Phapheng Falls

Despite its reputation as the largest waterfall in Southeast Asia, Khon Phapheng to the east of Don Khon, just off the Mekong shore, is rather disappointing. Indeed, it’s best described as a low but wide rock shelf that happens to have a huge volume of water running over it. The vertical drop is highest during the March – May dry season and becomes much less spectacular when river level rises during the rainy season. The Niagara Falls it is not. Still, the sight and sound of all that water crashing about is white mesmerizing and a pavilion situated just the falls provides an ideal place to sit and enjoy the view.

Bolaven Plateau

As gradual as Route 23’s eastwardly clime out of Pakxe is, there’s no mistaking when you’ve reached the Blaven Plateau, roughly 30km from Pakxe. The furcating heat of the Mekong Valley yield to a refreshingly cull breeze and coffee and tea plantations, exulting in the nutrient-rich soil, begin cropping up along either side of the highway. The plateau with an average altitude of 600m, dominates eastern Champasak and loosely defines the province’s border with Salavan, Xekong and Attapu. Rivers that eventually find their way into the Mekong plunge out of lush forest along the Bolaven’s edges in a series of spectacular waterfalls, some of which stand more than 100m high.

Banana Junction

The thumbnail village, nicknamed Banan Junction but properly known as Lak 21 and located as its name indicates, 21km from Pakxe is an important junction for bus transfers. There are connections here for Tad Lo and Salavan in the northeast or Pakxong and beyond. It’s the blur of sun-yellowed bunches of bananas, suspended  from bamboo poles in makeshift thatch lean-tos, that lens this three-way intersection its nickname. When bananas are out of season, pineapples and durians find their way onto the stands.

Tad Fan

Falling water enthusiasts will get a kick out of Tad fan, a cascade some 100m high set amidst primeval jungle as far as the eye can see. Of several waterfalls in the area, this one is the easiest to locate. Traveling east on Route 23 to Pakxong, turn right at the km 38 market. The dirt road leads through a coffee plantation and then forks.

Tad Lo 

Two hour’s bus journey northeast of Pakxe and 30km short of Salavan, 10m high Tad Lo, on the banks of the Xe Set river, drowns a steady stream of foreign visitors, providing the perfect setting for a few day’s relaxation and the opportunity to ride an elephant along the breezy western flank of the Bolaven Plateu.
In the hot season, the pools surrounding Tad Hang the lower falls are refreshing escape from the heat. Large boulders in the river shade a few surprisingly deep swimming holes and are perfect spots of lounging in the sun. Aficionados of night swimming should clear the water before 8pm, however when the floodgates of a dam upstream are opened and a torrent of water crashed down the river bed, without warning.

Salavan

North of the Bolaven, the provincial capital of Salavan looks more or less how you’d expect a town that was bombed flat 30 years ago to look. Alapdash wooden houses lean angles that suggest they weren’t expected to last as long as they have. In recent years new buildings of more permanent materials have begun slowly replacing the rickety wooden structures, but a walk around town still reveals evidence of Salavan’s tumultuous history. The ruins of Wat Phon Kaew, located in the grounds of the provincial hospital, consist of a shrapnel-pocked gateway and a ruined sputa. At the nearby army base a rusting anti-aircraft gun sits in a weedy field, and the observant visitor will note the presence of more than a few bomb craters.

Thateng

From Salavan it’s a laborious climb southeast through rich jungle surf and midland tribal villages up the steep curves of the Bolaven Plateau to Thateng, 40km away. A dusty, ramshackle congregation of threadbare markets and crooked wooden houses with thatch roofs. Thateng was where the French commissioner to Salavan, Jean Dauplay, “the father of Lao coffee”, chose to settle in the 1902s. Sadly, Thateng’s strategic location as the gateway to the plateau made it a prime target for American bombs: it was though that control of the plateau was the key to controlling the bulk of the far south.